Sergei Eisenstein

And then also the historical work of the development of really kind of the first interventions into cinema I think what we will have to talk about this, you know, how cinema does come out of the imperialist development period of inter-imperialist competition, right? I think that's something that's not talked about enough and acknowledged enough.

And this is not like a new revelation and Eisenstein and Kuleshov, right? were saying this in the 20s when they were doing really kind of the first robust, I think, critique and development of theory of cinema.

And then there's ways that even Oscar Micheaux, when him making things like Within Our Gates, which my podcast is named after, know his intervention against a white supremacy with with with those films and his work making that statement against you know people like griffith an open imperialist like i think you know we we do this thing about someone like griffith and we say oh griffith's a racist and all this birth of nations of races but he was also an imperialist he was a civilizational project person he saw cinema as part of a civilizational project as a necessary thing so doing all of that and coming back looking at what happened in the long 60s, anti-imperialist struggle, I guess neocolonialism, the work that comes out of that, and thinking about now.

So in there, there is a critique of the current orientation towards moviemaking that is multifaceted, that has a lot of different angles that we'll definitely get into today, right? So, and...

Right.

The way that they can present themselves was part of a civilizational project.

And this is where people like Eisenstein and people like Kuleshov in the early Soviet Union are very important because they, in their writings, they were doing a critique of this, right? One of Eisenstein's most important interventions was when SoundSync came.

He said, SoundSync is of the interest of imperialists.

Stanley went to the movies almost every night.

He saw the montage experiments of Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, and fell hard for Max Ophüls' tracking shots, moments where his camera moves with the actors.

One friend remembered Stanley as positively drunk on the movies.

But another friend, David Vaughan, said that just because Stanley was going to the movies all the time didn't mean he'd always pay attention.

[laughs]

Sergei Eisenstein.

You go, "What?" Like he had sketches of Picasso in his apartment-

Mm

Citizen Kane wouldn't be the same without Caligari.

But the movie that I chose is Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.

And the reason is... fully a film school movie like if you go to film school you're gonna they're gonna make you watch this you're gonna watch the Potemkin steps sequence over and over and over again because it's so important but Eisenstein is both the director and the film theorist of who really establishes what the idea of the montage, that it isn't just that I'm showing you this, but I am showing you this in conjunction with this.

And those two images create together, create some magic, some power, some emotional resonance that didn't exist without that particular juxtaposition.

And that is the core of filmmaking.

This is a new art form.

So when you get to Murnau and the Last Laugh and the Chaplin movies, and of course, D.W. Griffin, too, they are just beginning to learn how to tell a story via a visual medium.

And the piece that was missing is really the piece that Eisenstein provides.

I forgot who filmed Beloshe Potomkin originally.

Sergei Eisenstein, I think.

And also, yes, yes, I have strange knowledge.

So that was my first sort of, you know, another historical moment in the film.

I'm publishing this minisode on the 22nd of September, 2026, which means if you're listening to this on the day of release, we're just a week out from Silent Movie Day, which takes place every year on the 29th of September.

If you're a long-time listener, you'll already know that it was a film from the silent era, namely Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, that got me into movie podcasting in the first place.

I recorded that episode way back in 2016, which means that this year I'm celebrating my 10th anniversary as a podcaster.

You can find that episode elsewhere on the feed for this show.